Reimagining Characters with Unreal Engine's MetaHuman Creator: Elevate your films with cinema-quality character designs and motion capture animation

Discover the power of Unreal Engine 5 and the MetaHuman Creator in this illustrated guide to develop realistic digital characters, infusing them with full body and facial animation

Key Features

• Create realistic characters using the MetaHuman Creator using a mixture of preset and custom tools
• Import your character into Unreal Engine 5 to access more editing options and begin animating it
• Combine face and body motion capturing to fully animate your digital humans

Book Description

MetaHuman Creator (MHC) is an online, user-friendly 3D design tool for creating highly realistic digital humans that can be animated within Unreal Engine (UE) and enhanced with motion capture technology. This means that filmmakers and game developers now have access to a high quality, affordable solution that was previously only available to specialist studios.

This book will focus on using UE5 and MHC from a filmmaker angle. Firstly, you’ll understand how to use the online MHC to create a digital character, changing its facial structure, body type, and clothing. After that, you’ll learn all the necessary steps to bring the character into UE5 and set it up for animation. Then, using an iPhone and a webcam to capture face and body movements, you’ll mix these motion capture files, refine the animations using the MetaHuman Control Rig, and save these takes to be reused and edited again within the Level Sequencer. On top of that, you’ll learn how to create a rendered video file for film production using both the Level Sequencer and a VR Cinematic Camera. By the end of this book, you’ll have created your own MetaHuman character, as well as face and body motion capture data, and learned the necessary skills to give your future projects further realism and creative control.

What you will learn

• Create your own bespoke character using MHC
• Develop custom faces based on real people
• Utilize Blueprints to take control of your digital character
• Retarget animations using the Unreal Mannequin
• Use DeepMotion and Live Link for complete body and face animation
• Use the Control Rig to refine animations
• Export and render your character

Who this book is for

This book is for filmmakers and hobbyists who are planning to make a film using Unreal Engine for the first time, having worked in live action or purely digital media previously, either professionally or as a hobby. No experience with Unreal Engine is required, however it is useful to have some knowledge of 3D development applications and concepts like wireframes, skin weights, transform tools, and motion capture. It is recommended that you have access to an iPhone X (or a later model). Alternatively, you can use a free or paid version of Faceware, along with a basic webcam.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Unreal
2. Creating Characters in the Metahuman Interface
3. Diving into the MetaHuman Blueprint
4. Retargeting Animations
5. Retargeting Animations with Mixamo
6. Adding Motion Capture with DeepMotion
7. Using the Level Sequencer
8. Using an iPhone for Facial Motion Capture
9. Using Faceware for Facial Motion Capture
10. Blending Animations and Advanced Rendering with the Level Sequencer
11. Using the Mesh to Metahuman Plugin

Brian Rossney is a Creative Director and VFX Supervisor at Rossney Pictures. With 22 years of experience working in the film and TV industry, Brian has specialized in post-production and digital visual effects. He has produced commercials and TV opening sequences using 3D animation tools and 3D nodal based compositing applications. With a thorough understanding of the VFX and 3D animation pipeline, and live-action film producing and directing, Brian has lectured at Dublin City University and Galway Film Centre, and had worked as a VFX supervisor for Hallmark and Maravista. He is also the creator of two short films – they are called ‘Apetito', using Unreal Engine, and ‘1976’, using Unreal Engine and the MetaHuman Creator.